A surge of immigration arrests across California is putting the state’s “ICE-free” zones to the test, as immigration agents defy state and local directives to avoid making arrests in sensitive locations like jails and hospitals.
One such conflict peaked in Alameda County on Monday, when the county counsel sent a cease-and-desist letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s San Francisco field office demanding agents stop staging and targeting county lots, especially Alameda County Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. Those activities, the letter contends, defy a resolution county board members passed unanimously earlier this year. ICE agents, the letter says, have repeatedly ignored Sheriff’s deputies orders to leave the Dublin jail.
The letter, signed by the county’s interim counsel Andrea Weddle, described two incidents that alarmed county leaders: One happened Sunday when agents “engaged in a physical confrontation” with people inside the jail’s lobby. The other happened on Nov. 1, when agents chased a man from the parking lot into the jail lobby and arrested him there…